


here, you live now

by amandaskankovich



Category: Shameless (US)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-28
Updated: 2016-12-28
Packaged: 2018-09-12 20:05:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9088303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amandaskankovich/pseuds/amandaskankovich
Summary: Mickey meets a boy on a beach.





	

Six weeks later and you still weren’t ready to want anything other than what you’d already successfully gained back: your freedom, your bedroom sized apartment, your job washing dishes that paid under the table and for food and not much else.

Ian’s money had your rent covered for 5 more months and you were being very careful not to want more than that. Your bedroom sized apartment, the food your job got you, the sand under your toes.

You’d gotten into the habit of waking up early. You didn’t sleep in in prison.

Even the days when all you’d wanted was to sleep every second of every day. Tired deep down to the bones and soul of you. You didn’t get to decide that.

Anyway. You remind yourself every day that you are not in prison. You are 44 days not in prison. You’re growing your hair long again and no one is looking for you.

No one.

You work nights now but you never sleep more than 5 hours or so when you fall into bed around midnight most nights. You wake up right before the sunrise and you walk the 15 minutes to the beach and you sit in the early morning chill and feel the sun rise and the warmth come and the sand between your toes and you earned this.

You earned this.

When your eyes adjust enough to the early light sometimes: you see him.

You see him concentrate as the waves carry him up and down and around and then when he’s done you watch him make his way out of the sea.

He wasn’t the first one you watched but now he’s the one you wait for and the mornings when he doesn’t show up you feel something that could be mistaken for disappointment if you allowed yourself to feel that anymore.

Anyway you don’t know when he became your favorite. But at some point he did.

He recognizes you now and he usually smiles at you if you let yourself not look away from him when he walks past. Most days though you have to look away from him.

Most days you make yourself not turn your head until you hear the sound of a car starting and him pulling away.

You’re not really ready to want again. You think that if you could just be sure he’d fuck you senseless and then disappear that would be fine. But something about the way he smiles at you tugs at your heart in a familiar and dangerous way. If he smiled at you like that after sex you know you could never come back to this beach again. You refuse to lose one more thing.

So sometimes you don’t look at him and this is all fine and good and safe. Until he decides to be an asshole one day and when you look away he sits himself down next to you.

Well fuck.

*

You do not look at him when you hear him ask, “Turista?”

You don’t answer and then he says, “You are…tourist?”

You don’t answer, “That’s the right word…yes? I think you aren’t. Tourist. You’re here everyday. This beach is not that nice to be here everyday. I mean I’m here everyday but is close to my job.”

Your skin is burning. Then he says, “Do you want me to stop talking to you?”

You don’t say anything. You don’t look at him. But you do shake your head: No. Don’t go. Don’t stop talking.

“Okay,” He says. Then after awhile, “You’re not so pale anymore as when I first noticed you.”

You stare at his hands in the sand instead of looking at his face. You know if you look at his face… But then you watch his hands inch across the sand and towards your fingers. You snatch them away before he can reach you. You look up and you realize he’d been looking down at your hand. He lifts his head and then there are his eyes looking at you.

“I’m Octavio,” He says and he smiles. Then he holds out his hand expecting you to shake it and you actually fucking take it.

Fuck.

*

Your hands are touching his back. His skin is dripping wet. His skin is hot to the touch. His dark hair keeps falling into his eyes. There’s a mole on his shoulder blade.

You know you’ll put your mouth on it. A few minutes later you do.

You lick salt water up and off his neck.

*

He wants you to come to his car with him. You don’t want to take the chance of changing your mind in the five minute walk. You yank at his swim trunks and you bite and lick your way up his thigh.

His name moans out of your mouth. When did you tell him that? When between kiss, lick, sigh into his mouth? When before he comes in yours?

“No I’m not a tourist. I live here.”

*

You come to find he has a different smile for after.

 

*

You get in his car. You go to his apartment. You like it. He doesn’t have that much more space than you do but he seems to be better at utilizing it. There’s a lot of plants and books but it doesn’t feel cramped inside and he offers you tea or coffee. Not beer immediately and later you’ll know it’s because he doesn’t drink beer and it will be one of a million times you’ll look at him and think, “Who are you?”

But sometimes the who are you is you. Because when he says tea or coffee you say tea.

*

He has a guitar and one day he plays it for you but not that first day.

He says, “I don’t do that the first time I bring someone home, it’s too cheesy.” He looks at you and very intensely says, “It is very important to me that you think I am cool all the time.”

He’s massaging your feet when he says this and you stick your toes in his mouth.

He bites them gently and smiles and you say, “Oh yeah man, you’re cool as shit.”

*

He calls you one night 95 days after you blow Octavio for the first (but not the last) time on that beach.

You think it’s Svetlana at first because she’s the only one you gave a contact number to.

“No,” He says, “It’s me.”

And the tears come right at the word, “No,” Hot and fast and so many. You bite your clenched fist because you don’t want to wake Octavio. You practically fall out of the bed, crawl into the bathroom, slam the door. All the breath knocked out of you. You think the walk talks two thousand years. You think the line will be dead when you speak again. You think: This is a dream. This is a dream.

“Ian?” You say sitting on Octavio’s bathroom floor.

“Yeah,” He says, “Yeah it’s me.”

*

You think for a second he’s going to say, “I’m coming to find you.”

Dumb. Dumb. And what if he did? Would you want him to? That’s never been a question before but you look at yourself in Octavio’s bathroom mirror. He’s been helping you with your spanish by having you watch action movies dubbed. You don’t know how well it’s working but you like how it feels to just lay on the couch with him.

You aren’t really pale at all anymore.

Anyway he’s not coming to you (of course) so never mind the question of what you’d do if he showed up on your door. You’re grateful for the lack of having to decide that.

You imagine what must be going on with him to have him make this call. What relationship just imploded. What life event just came crashing down. But you can’t make yourself ask. And he apparently can’t make himself offer. You think he sounds a little drunk. You think you feel a little drunk. Just like that. Just hearing him. You shake.

He says, “It’s good to hear your voice.”

And that makes you cry again.

Not as much this time.

*

Octavio wants to teach you how to swim but you keep freezing up every time your feet touch the water.

You think it should be enough that you’re standing in the sand. It’s enough for you.

He removes his arms from where they’d been wrapped around you and he smiles and says, “Fine just watch me then, for now anyway.”

And you do.

He disappears into the waves and then he’s back again.


End file.
